Opinion

Denis Bradley: British and Irish governments need to steer us through the stormy waters ahead

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley is a columnist for The Irish News and former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.

It is the British and Irish governments who need to steer us through the choppy waters ahead. Pictured are Boris Johnson (right) Micheál Martin at Hillsborough Castle, August 2020. Brian Lawless/PA Wire.
It is the British and Irish governments who need to steer us through the choppy waters ahead. Pictured are Boris Johnson (right) Micheál Martin at Hillsborough Castle, August 2020. Brian Lawless/PA Wire. It is the British and Irish governments who need to steer us through the choppy waters ahead. Pictured are Boris Johnson (right) Micheál Martin at Hillsborough Castle, August 2020. Brian Lawless/PA Wire.

We are more than willing to get annoyed with our local politicians and political parties. Most of the time they are deserving of the abuse that is thrown at them.

But we are far less willing to have a go at the British and Irish governments, who hold the real power and who together should be steering our little boat through the choppy waters that are churned up every so often. Any time our politics gets out of kilter, any time our political parties go AWOL from the agreed script, it is to the two governments that we need to turn our gaze.

The present squally waters could and, indeed, were easily seen from afar. Brexit did what it said on the tin, creating further tension about the Union, most especially amongst Irish unionists. It would be very tempting to descend to the ‘hell rub it up them’ response but that adds little to the debate.

What would be helpful is to admit that what is happening is foundational or, as the academics like to say, existential.

Northern Ireland’s place and future within or without the UK is not going to be determined because of a few checks at the sea ports but unionism is correct in feeling that they are being pushed further adrift from the extended family of England and the UK.

The basic, existential issue has been thrust upon us sooner and more definitively than we might have expected. But it is where we are and where politics is going to be in the coming years. There is no going back; the future of Ireland, the unity of the UK and the relationships between all the nations is now central and unavoidable. The outcome is not yet clear or fully defined but its impetus cannot be stopped. That reality excites some, disgusts others and frightens many that it may bring us back to violence.

In this case the pandemic may be a blessing. Covid and getting vaccines into our arms is and will be, for a considerable time, the focus of our attention. Attach that to the complexity of trade and customs and tariffs, subjects that either elude or bore most of us and the irony is that the deep psychological tension of possible constitutional change is being experienced in soft focus.

It is not so easy to stimulate violence in soft focus especially when the memory of the elders who were involved in the violence are telling their successors that their years of violence hindered rather than advanced their cause.

But even in soft focus there is the danger of unplanned and unintentional events. That is why the two governments need to take charge of steering the politics of the next few years.

It has to be recognised that Brexit also ruffled feathers in the various layers of the governments themselves but the umbilical cord that was incubated over many decades was never fully severed. There is too much memory and understanding that there is no going back to the terrible days before the umbilical cord evolved, when the two governments worked to two completely separate agendas.

Presently, the major issues of contention are the Northern Ireland Protocol followed by the border poll and when and how it should be run.

Further down the scale but still a constant source of friction is the legacy of the past. Three big beasts. On the protocol the governments, together, need to lay down the marker, clarifying what is fluid and what is constant, irrespective of protests or court cases. On the border poll they should agree and announce the earliest and the latest dates on which it will take place. On the past, the British government will soon publish a strategy. On its own it will create some ruction; without the involvement and blessing of the Irish government that ruction will be even greater.